With 250,000 people near Limerick nuclear, is evacuation plan realistic?

We’ve all thought it, sitting in traffic on Route 422 and looking at the cooling towers of the Limerick Generating Station looming over the landscape: “If I can’t even get to King of Prussia at 7 a.m., how are they ever going to get us out of here if that place goes?”

That question is particularly relevant when you consider how much the region’s population has grown since the plant was built.

According to data assembled by the Associated Press as part of its series on aging nuclear power plants, the population in a 10-mile radius around Exelon Nuclear’s Limerick Generating Station has increased by 45 percent since 1990 - from 178,047 to 257,625.

That’s an increase of nearly 80,000 people.

That puts Limerick about in the middle of population increases near nuclear power plants around the country, according to the AP data.

For example, since 1980, the population in the 10 miles around the Monticello nuclear plant in Minnesota has jumped by a whopping 314 percent.

By contrast, here in Pennsylvania, the population in the 10 miles around the Beaver Valley plant in Shippingport, has actually dropped by 23 percent since 1980.

And in a 50-mile radius - the region evacuated during the Fukushima disaster in Japan - the population around Limerick has increased by more than 855,000 since 1990.

That’s a 12 percent increase.

That’s also a lot of people.

But it’s important to remember, said Limerick spokesman Joe Szafran, that the roadway network has expanded during that time as well.

“Remember, when Limerick was built, Route 422 was not even finished,” Szafran said.

He said the increases in population are taken into account as the emergency evacuation plans the Exelon staff updates are reviewed, something that happens constantly in some form or another.

Growth in the region has slowed because of the slowing economy, but even if it picks up, the plan will be adjusted to handle it, Szafran said.

“I don’t think we will ever get to the point where we won’t be able to evacuate,” he said, adding “there will never be a time when there are too many people to evacuate.”

Ruth Miller, deputy press secretary for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, said the evacuation plan for Limerick was last updated in 2008, but acknowledged that “there have been no serious changes to evacuation routes since they were first devised.”

It’s important to note, she said, that the routes are not the only ways to leave the area if it becomes necessary.

“People are free to leave by any road they want” so long as it is not blocked by officials, Miller said.

The evacuation routes “are guidance to the reception centers if you don’t have a plan of where to go.”

As anyone who has looked through the phone book knows, much of the information about evacuation centers, pick-up points and numbers to call can be found there.

The centers are also where school children would be taken in the event of an evacuation, where questions can be answered, where mass care centers would be set up and shelter provided, Miller said.

Miller declined to release any information about evacuation time estimates, saying she consulted with PEMA’s legal counsel and was advised the information, while provided to PEMA, is “owned by utilities” and “is not ours to release.”

Of course not every accident requires an evacuation.

Exelon outlines four kinds of incidents:

Unusual Event: Indicates a potential degradation of safety or security threat and no release of radioactive material requiring off-site response.

Alert: Events that involve “probably life-threatening risk to site personnel or damage to site equipment” because of a hostile act. Any releases “are expected to be small fractions” of safety guidelines.

Site Area Emergency: Involves “major failures of plant functions needed for protection of the public;” but still, releases under this scenario “are not expected to result in exposure levels” beyond safety guidelines beyond the boundary of the site.

General Emergency: Involves “actual or imminent substantial core degradation or melting with potential for loss of containment integrity or security events that result in an actual loss of physical control of the facility. Releases can be reasonably expected to exceed” safety guidelines for radiation exposure off-site.

Area residents can also take advantage of “rumor control telephone numbers.”

In Berks, that number is 610-320-6150; in Chester it’s 610-344-4785 and in Montgomery the number is 610-631-9700.